Or... Chip-on-a-chip-on-a-chip-on-a-chip. Would it be worth the effort? Say a 6502, HuC6280, and 68k were re-produced at a fraction of their original size through modern-day technology, then consolidated together into a small chip. Then say the same approach were followed for unifying Audio/Video processing onto a chip, and then for the several differing types of RAM. In other words (for the above example), fitting a NES-on-a-chip, MD-on-a-chip, and PCE-on-a-chip like puzzle pieces into one dense chip for 100% accurate support of several different retro consoles on one ultra-portable chip. The design could become more labyrinthine as it matures... Perhaps with a modern processor as the hub of many spokes, with the ultimate goal of having an architecture that can handle every legacy system natively and possibly even run every version of Mario Kart simultaneously (imagine that for a showdown!) Just rambling here. Someone is probably already doing it and I've more than likely been under a rock for a long time. Either way, I find it to be an exciting idea. Certainly easier said than done.
Or just use a FPGA and opencores? Could upload which ever core you wanted at runtime i guess? http://opencores.org/ Doubt it would make sense to do anything like this in a custom chip.
So a famiclone, Genesis clone and PC Engine clone all in one box. Because just one doesn't make your eyes and ears bleed enough? It's a great idea in theory but Sega can't even get their own single chip systems right and people have been trying to accurately reproduce the famicon for ages. But I'm sure it will happen eventually. Just hope I live long enough to see it.
Sega hasn't done anything, Atgames just offered them a big fat check to put Sonic on the cover and they took it. Regardless, at that point, why not just use a computer emulation? Most of those systems have good emulators already.
I think there are still things that aren't known about those consoles, so it's not possible to make a perfect copy of them. Like abevost said, there have been clones of various kinds for a long time, but none of them are exactly the same as the original consoles. It might be possible one day, but not right now. Emulators have gotten better and will probably continue to get better in the future, so maybe eventually there will be near-perfect emulation of those consoles.
Famiclones are sub-par, but they are usually made on the cheap by people who only care to profit from the increasing scarcity and price of the original hardware they're cloning. The original hardware is a vital reference tool for designing emulators and clones in the first place. Give it enough time, and it will fade away from a mix of age and poor care. The same goes for carts and CRTs. Outside of emulation, anything physical will eventually turn into a sea of shoddy clones, aftermarket repros, and flash carts (mind you, the proportion of fake to authentic has been skyrocketing over the past few years). The ability to reproduce a pure if not highly accurate representation of the hardware in it's native form while the resources to do so are still readily available would at least help to fill the coming void. Embedding the legacy architectures (in addition to the many that reach far outside video game hardware) into a 'centered oneness' of sorts would be a good step towards preserving them for the future. The digital dark age is a thing, although it could easily be prevented by organized, routine preservation. Emulation is very useful for all intents and purposes... a small PC and USB cartridge/controller adapters could do far more than 20 different consoles could. Imagine how even more amazing emulators would be if we were able to reproduce each of the 20 consoles in their physical form. Again, rambling here, easier said than done. I like it. A realistic approach for additional modularity without an insane amount of effort.
Haha, who's to say you can't? A potato can be chips or power a clock... so why shouldn't every other electrical medium be edible as well? That way if a circuit "fried out", it would A.) smell like hash browns, B.) turn useless scrap parts into a snack in an instant. Potatoes: 1 PCBs: 0
